Bobsy Blog 2020 No. 18

The news that our building on Wellington Street was being sold, so as to be knocked down and replaced by a high rise modern building came to me as quite sad news.

Our Landlord whom we had worked with for those nine years, was not being very supportive or helpful and had only one thing on his mind and that was to sell the building at the highest price possible to the developers because they had already bought the two buildings next door and so could not build without our building. And there we were stuck at the mercy of greed.

I loved this charming old 1950’s building with its high ceilings and peaceful Bali-esque backyard oasis in the heart of Central and it’s adjacent back alley with trees and plants. This being the reason we decided to open our first MANA! Fast Slow Food (Later known as MANA! Central) on that street in the first place, even though people said the Feng Shui was bad and no other business had ever succeeded there. For me this was an uncanny deja vu. Life (Cafe) on the escalator at No 10 Shelley Street had a similar problem. There had been a succession of about 6 or 7 restaurants and business that had failed there. We opened Life in April 2004 after 6 months of renovations which we built with reclaimed & second hand wood from Bali. In spite of the negative Feng Shui, we brought a positive, proactive & communal vibe to the hood. Made a few energetic adjustments and bingo, Life became one of the most successful establishments in SoHo.

Alas I personally pulled out in 2010 after my then business partners lost their integrity and were putting pressure on me to stop all things communal, eco-friendly and what to me was the heart & soul of Life’s success. So, seemingly overnight, I resigned as Director, stopped taking any salary and was out of there. I soon after started a campaign called “Save the Human!, Don’t Eat the Planet!” , which some people may be familiar with. I also began my journey to open MANA!, which took a good 2 years to manifest. MANA! at 92 Wellington Street was the same. We simply repeated what we do best in 2012, and built a vibrant, eco-friendly and positive community around MANA! Central that soon became one of the most beloved & successful establishments in Central. Pioneering zero food waste, minimum waste, zero tolerance for plastic & some of the healthiest, yummiest & rather inexpensive food the city had ever seen. This of course became MANA! that is beloved by many today. And now MANA! SoHo, has opened its doors in this charming hood on the escalator that is so familiar to me.

When we were faced with the inevitability of closing M! Central down, we knew that we had to find an even better location, and that we had to raise the bar considerably as our original location had BIG shoes to fill. So the hunt was on, we wanted to remain close by and I secretly wished we could find a decent location on the escalator once again. When the old Burger King site was whispered into my ears, hush, hush ever so secretly, because it was not on the market, I knew we had found that magical spot, that only pops up once in a blue moon. So we needed to pull all the resources, talent & positive manifestation energies we could muster in these most challenging times for our beloved city. The civil protests were at their height and HK people were very disturbed and unsettled, the city resonated with a similar vibe of fear & uncertainty. The landlord was asking a lot of money for this site, but we had the challenging times on our side and argued our case for a lower rental and longer terms. We are lucky to have decent landlords this time round. The week we signed was one of the most disturbing weeks in HK’s recent past. We signed and so began the next challenges, the expenses and the hassle of renovating and opening a restaurant in our city, which is never easy to say the least. We broke concrete on March the first and began our complete redesign and renovation, which took us just over 10 weeks to be able to open, a record indeed!

We remain in our “soft opening” period till this day, as we put all the final touches and details that make MANA! well, MANA! including our signature hand made Bali cobbled street tiles & our Free Water For All fountain. What is worthy of nothing here, is that we managed to up-cycle & recycle all our old timber from M! Central & M! PoHo, as well as most of our furniture & fixtures. And what is even more worthy of noting is that we are now using all the old furniture from Life (cafe) that we had made in Bali back in 2003 & that sat on the roof of Life for 15 years... Now you can relive some of your old memorable moments from Life (cafe) , MANA! Central & MANA! PoHo, by sitting on the exact wooden furniture you may have sat on back in 2004, 2011 or 2018...

I look forwards to seeing you in M! SoHo & M! Starstreet in the coming days, weeks, months & years...

Until soon…
Bobsy Gaia